A decision by the National Institutes of Health to cancel research at Florida A&M’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences may have reverberations throughout the Sunshine State.
Last month, NIH, which is a part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, announced it would eliminate $16.3 million in funding at Florida’s only public historically Black university.
The Tallahassee Democrat was first to report the story.
The funding at FAMU was used to research incidence rates of triple-negative breast cancer as well as colorectal cancer — both of which are more prevalent in Black Americans than other racial subsets.
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FAMU interim president Timothy Beard said in a statement that the university will appeal the decision.
“The funding was awarded to support new faculty hires and enhanced research in key areas such as artificial intelligence, bioinformatics and cancer biology,” Beard said. “For nearly 40 years, faculty and graduate students have relied on this center to conduct biomedical and health research. The program is a critical contributor to the University’s ability to produce 60 percent of the nation’s Ph.D. graduates in pharmaceutical sciences from various backgrounds.”
Cancer rates in Duval
The FAMU research is particularly relevant in Duval County, where the overall colorectal cancer incidence rate has been higher here than the statewide average for each of the past 15 years.
The rate in 2021 was 39 cases per 100,000 residents. Between 2017 and 2021, the rate for Black people in Duval County was 41 out of 100,000 residents. That was percentage points higher than the 40.5 incidence rate for white residents and much greater than the 30.4 incidence rate for Duval’s Hispanic residents or the 25.9 rate for Asian residents.
Meanwhile, Duval’s female breast cancer incidence rate, 153 per 100,000 residents, is higher than the six other metropolitan counties in the state.
The national data for the most recent five-year period available show that 32 of every 100,000 people in the United States were diagnosed with colon cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s National Cancer Institute. During that same period, 130 of every 100,000 Americans were diagnosed with breast cancer.
The female breast cancer incidence rate of 141 out of 100,000 Duval County residents between 2017 and 2021 is rising.
Research across the state
Florida A&M is one of several universities across the country that lost grant funding from NIH this calendar year, as the Trump administration sought to cap the agency’s for indirect costs and/or overhead expenses for universities.
The moved stifled research across the state.
According to HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants system, FAMU is one of six universities in the state that had NIH grants canceled.
Among the others:
- Florida State University had $366,855 of a $1.9 million grant to address vaccine hesitancy among Black adults in the south canceled on April 1.
- The University of Central Florida had $2.0 million of a $2.8 million grant to help trans women canceled on March 14.
- The University of Florida saw $717,873 of a $1.4 million grant to reduce internalize health-related stigmas canceled March 21.
- Florida International University lost $126,711 of a $9.6 million grant to fund research on COVID-19 testing among underserved communities March 24.
The cuts were not reserved for public institutions in the state. The University of Miami and the University of Miami Medical School had 12 grants totaling $2.73 million canceled.
Will Brown is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.